-If you go to Taiwan, there's so many different types
of beef noodle soup. Like every neighborhood has one.
I can eat this all day. ♪♪ Hello, my name is
Richard Ho of Ho Foods. We're making a Taiwanese-style
red cook beef noodle soup Moving to New York, I couldn't
find any Taiwanese food, and when I would be at home
and had friends over and make this dish,
it was one dish that really reminded
everyone of home a little bit. So I thought that,
if this was the one dish that can bring back
that memory for people, this is the one dish that I wanted to spend all my time
thinking about. I boned out a foreshank
and a hindshank. We blanch all the meat just to kind of firm it up
a little bit. And you can either boil
this whole thing whole, or you can kind of
slice it up into pieces. It's really up to you. Just let it go
for maybe a minute or so. Now we're going to start
on the braise. The three main aromatics
in kind of Asian cuisine is ginger, garlic, and scallion.
That's our trinity. You want enough oil to kind
of coat the bottom of the pan. I like to start with the ginger
because, you know, it's really hard to burn ginger. Let's get that in there. And then scallions. I like this end because each
piece has kind of more onion per bite, and you want to cut it
kind of as thin as you can. You know, I want scallions to
melt in the bowl when I put them in there. So we're gonna save these
for a garnish at the end. Whoop. Garlic last. Put the whole thing in. [ Sizzling ] This is a soybean-based
doubanjiang from Taiwan. This is funk. It's got umami, and this is also
a spicy version of it. So it's kind of chili,
funky, spicy. And you kind of want
to caramelize this a little bit. And here we have, you know,
another version of this, which is kind of
the non-spicy version of it, which is very similar,
but it's soybeans fermented. And lastly, we have --
This is actually from Sichuan. This is made with
like broad beans, fava beans. And this is usually aged a little bit longer
than those two. You know, if I'm using those
two, I kind of like a two-to-one or three-to-one ratio of maybe
a soybean-based doubanjiang versus a broad bean-based
doubanjiang. You want to chop this up
a little bit. So this kind of
breaks it apart, and you kind of get
a little bit more surface area. ♪♪ When you sauté, it'll --
it'll kind of caramelize and it'll stick to the bottom
of the pan a little bit. That's okay. You just don't
want it to burn it. Then I'll add my rice wine. Once you put the rice
wine in there, you really want to cook
that alcohol flavor off. You're just using that to
kind of deglaze a little bit. Then we're going to add
a little bit soy sauce. I mix a couple different kinds. I use some aged soy,
some dark soy. I like a little darker in color. And rock sugar.
This is very home style. This is how my mom
would make it. As I got older and started
making this a lot, I would meet Taiwanese people
from kind of all over America. It just reminds them so much
of what their mom made, as well. The next part is take
the shanks and put them back in this
liquid, and you kind of want to sauté these
in that liquid a little bit. At this point, at the shop,
we'd probably add beef stock just to make it even beefier,
but at home, I think it's completely fine
to just add water. All right. You want to let this
come up to a boil. But there's a few more things
we have to add to this, too. Just a little bit of carrot. Tomatoes.
Right. When we opened up the shop, So many Taiwanese moms came in,
and I was always very nervous 'cause I -- you know, I felt
like they were my moms. Moms would be like, "Hey.
You know what my secret is?" Oh, apples. Apples.
That's -- That's my secret. So, for today,
some apples in there. And there's one last thing
we have to put in there is the spice bags, we're gonna
bring out some spices. Today we have some cinnamon,
a licorice. One piece is enough. Goji berries,
a little bit of sweetness. Sichuan peppercorns,
not too much. Here's some fennel seeds. ♪♪ There's a little bit of ginseng. Great.
And now we let this simmer. You know, this is going
to take a couple hours. You know, this beef shank's
got so much kind of like tendon running through them. If you cook it to the point
where you -- you pinch it with your tongs and the --
and the meat falls apart, you've kind of gone too far.
You want it right before then where there's a little bit
of a play. It feels like maybe
a Tempur-Pedic pillow or something. So now we're going
to let this go for about maybe an hour,
hour and a half. While this is going, we're gonna
work on pickled mustard greens. It's like the one condiment
that you have on this. When you're looking
for mustard greens, I like this. They're really big, they call
them big head vegetables. I like this part. I kind of like
the crunchy sour bits. What we do at the shop is we just get
a little kosher salt. You know,
sprinkle liberally over them. These guys will crush 'em just to kind of get that
fermentation process started. Make sure that you get
salt nice one the insides of all these pieces.
All right. You can also see how this thing
has softened up a little bit. But the thing is,
after about a day, you'll see some water
will come off and this will kind of turn
a little darker green. And then, after a few more days, it'll kind of turn
an army green. And you just want to keep
this fully submerged under water the entire time. If you need to add more water,
add like a salt water. And then, after about a month,
that's what they look like. You see that same shape
in the middle and kind of this dark
army green. And we'll go and half. ♪♪ My mama said you always have
to sauté this no matter what. With a little bit of
Thai chili and some garlic. You can mince it.
Or you can just slice it. Just smash it. Little bit of oil. ♪♪ Put that in there. This probably takes a lot more
sugar than you think it does. We're kind of going for like
a sweet and sour flavor here. ♪♪ Ideally, you want to put it
in the fridge. This'll help cool
it down a little bit. All right. So it's been about
90 minutes or so. We're gonna take out
our beef shanks. They're not falling apart when
I'm kind of picking them up yet. So it's great.
Nice. I'll just strain this. [ Sizzling ] Awesome. So now we're left with our soup. This should be super gelatinous. It's should smell like all those
spices that you put in there. This is another thing
that my mom would do. She would always add just
a little bit of soy sauce just because fresh soy tastes
different than cooked soy. And then she would add
a little bit of white pepper in the bottom,
a little bit of sesame oil. And then black vinegar.
Just a splash. You know, fresh noodles take
about a minute and a half to two and a half minutes
to cook, depending on your fresh noodles. You can tell
when noodles are done when they get
a little bit puffy. So now we have
our noodles in here. Want to add a little bit
of soup. Remember that beef
that we had earlier? You see,
this is like a little squishy, but it's not kind of
falling apart. So we just do
a couple slices like this. I like them a third of an inch. You can plate 'em
however you want, put them on the side over there. At the shop, we make
a chili crisp with beef fat. So this is like a beef fat-based
chili crisp. It's just tons of aromatics,
a few different types of chili. Some scallions.
And then, I like cilantro. This soup should be
pretty intense in flavor. It should be like salty,
it should be sweet. [ Slurps ] Ahh.
Not bad. It's got all those
herbal flavors to it. ♪♪ Oh, yeah, that's done
just right. I think, in America, people are
so obsessed with tender, and this is kind of tender
and chewy at the same time. That's what you want, you want
that chew from the tendons, and you want kind of the meat to
kind of fall apart a little bit. Those mustard greens. [ Slurping ] It's nice. The hot sauce just gives you
that little beef fat. We're mostly a beef noodle
soup shop and sometimes a Taiwanese
breakfast shop. And it's nice to think
about one thing because everything
you can think about, like the hot sauce
or the chili oil, you know, is beef based because it's just for
the beef noodle soup. Once in a while,
we'll think about, oh, how do we get just
a little bit more flavor or just want to get the texture
just a little bit different. For the recipe,
please click the link below or come visit us at Ho Foods. ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪♪
